Contents

Scuba diving dedicated site

I based myself on the wikitravel model to start a wiki (using mediawiki as well) dedicated to listing diving sites around the world and information pertinent to scuba diver. I'm posting this here hoping there may be people here interested in getting involved in that project as well. I've only been playing around for now (copying pages from wikitravel and modifing them), trying to learn how to set-up the wiki. If anyone is interested, you could leave me a message on this talk page. An e-mail through this wiki would work as well. --Charles

I agree, but I was thinking of something with detailed information for divers about specific dive sites. An article could be about the Empress of Ireland specifically rather than about the general Rimouski area and information useful to divers could include depth, water temperature, typical visibility, recommended experience level, etc... I'm not looking to duplicate wikitravel with more emphasis on scuba diving but rather to make something specific to scuba diving. In fact, I think it would be great to link back to wikitravel, seeing as divers may want to visit an area they are travelling to. --Charles

I see a few problems with this. One is that maybe not everyone on wikitravel agrees. If I base myself on the music sections of goals and non-goals, one could argue that detailed information about a sport should only be included if that sport is part of the local cultural color or identity. Scuba diving can be done anywhere there's water and as such, maybe should not be included in wikitravel in a detailed fashion. After reading different debates on wikitravel on what should and shouldn't be included I came to that conclusion, hence my working on a separate wiki.

More practically, the main-classification tree of wikitravel is geo-political, Continents>Countries>States/Provinces/...>Counties etc...>Destination. This might not be the best suited approach for a wiki dedicated to dive sites. I could see a main classification tree that's mainly geographic as more useful with links to the political regions in the particular dive sites articles. So in an article on the empress of ireland, there would be a link to the wikitravel article on rimouski so someone could know where they would be travelling to. Another classification tree by type of dive sites would also be possible. My point is that I could see several ways of classifying the dive sites, which would end up creating a much separate project inside the same wiki.

Also, divers could want information specific about scuba diving on the main page. For example, the news section of the main page could well have news on the state of dive sites, resorts and dive shops in areas affected by conflicts or natural disasters. That information would be very valuable for divers, but probably not so interested on the main page of wikitravel.

Finally, divers could potentially start to include articles on diving techniques particular to certain dive sites. I would guess that information is probably not wanted on wikitravel, but could be of use on a scuba diving wiki.

I'm starting to wonder if my posting on this section of a talk page was spam. In any case, it wasn't intended as such. I thought it would be relevant to invite certain wikitravel members since there were a few mentions on the wiki of wikitravellers interested in scuba diving and so on. --Charles

It's not spam, you haven't even posted the link (and you're welcome to do so!). While I see what you're getting at, as an avid diver myself I'd prefer to keep the info in one place -- no matter how hardcore a diver you are, you still need to get a taxi from the airport and find places to eat, drink and sleep, which is squarely in Wikitravel territory. Why not a "Diving portal" inside Wikitravel that provides a dive-oriented entry point?

Also, the whole classification tree thing is quite new and we're still working out how to classify non-destination articles, so don't worry about that just yet -- see Wikitravel:RDF for some discussion if interested. Jpatokal 06:47, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)

I agree entirely that there should be a lot of opportunities to access wikitravel content from a scuba diving wiki and the other way around as well. This would be the case for many other sports if there's interest in it (like this golf discussion). I could think of cyclo-tourism or mountain climbing as potential candidates. Anyhow, my point is not to make a list of the other possibilities. I'm really only interested in scuba diving right now.

I like your idea of the scuba diving portal page and close interrelation between the two "sections" if I can call them like that. I would be all for making it as seamless as possible. I would still like to see the scuba diving section retain a certain distinct character. Both for it's own sake and for wikitravel not get swamped by scuba diving related information (were that ever to be possible). I guess at this point, the question I have is whether this would be better served by a single server or two seperate servers. I have set-up a wiki on a different server and reserved a domain name (http://www.wikiscuba.org/). There really is nothing there right now except for a modified copy of the wikitravel main page and a few other pages. I was more playing around with the wiki to understand how to use it.

Could we move this discussion to a page with more exposure to get more input? Also, how the hell do I get the time stamp after my name on a page?!?! (You can tell my wiki skills are not so sharp yet) -- Charles

The last two are already linked from the appropriate section (they're providers of dive certification). Hypatia 00:19, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

Splitting/editing

So this is a big article and it covers a few different things. What should we do about it? Hypatia 22:01, 1 June 2006 (EDT)

For what it's worth, the reason it contains so much stuff about learning to dive is that I wrote it just after I learned, and I put everything in that I wished I'd known. I still think some info about learning would be merited, in particular: what certification means, whether to learn on your vacation, what the difference between a resort course or supervised dive and certification is. Some of the other seemingly travel relevant stuff is: liveaboard vs day trip, insurance, and, obviously, the destinations, which could probably do with their own article or index (ultimately a series of articles like Scuba diving in Australia). Hypatia 22:05, 1 June 2006 (EDT)

Sea sickness

We need to double-check the brand names. I've never seen something called dramamine in Australia, and it's not usually those chemicals listed at the moment either. Hypatia 19:18, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

Also the reason I keep adding a note saying that the illness is worse than the side effects sometimes is on behalf of my dive buddy, who threw up 20 times on his first dive day and started trembling and showing signs of dehydration. For the sake of people like that we need to acknowledge that sometimes the medicines are worth it, particularly if you hit the sweet spot between effectiveness and drowsiness. Hypatia 19:24, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

I can't tell you what brand it's marketed under in Oz, but the active ingredient is either dimenhydrinate (Dramamine: very drowsy) or meclizine (Dramamine II: drowsy). - Todd VerBeek 20:28, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

So, I take "Travacalm", and it says the active ingredient is something called "hyoscine hydrobromide". Which of those two is it? Hypatia 23:54, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

Neither. Hyoscine is another name for scopolamine. Jpatokal 03:14, 24 July 2006 (EDT)

Ah, that's prescription-only in the US (sold in patch form as Transderm Scop and tablet form as Scopace). Also popular as a date-rape drug (I'm told). - Todd VerBeek 12:06, 24 July 2006 (EDT)